As far as the new features planned by Microsoft for the next version of its anti-malware software, Microsft Security Essentials will integrate with Internet Explorer for improved protection against web-based threats - stopping malicious scripts from running immediately.

The current version of Microsoft Security Essentials can only detect such scripts when they are in the users' Internet Explorer cache, which could well be too late.

The new Security Essentials will also offer improved protection against any suspicious network traffic, working with the Windows Filtering Platform.

This means the new Security Essentials features will only work on Vista or Windows 7 machines, not on those older machines still running Windows XP.

The beta has been made available to those that want to try it out via Microsoft Connect